• Inventive Designers Launches DTM for iSeries Version 3

  October 9, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Inventive Designers recently launched a new release of Data/Text Merge (DTM) for iSeries, version 3. With this release, the OfficeVision/400 replacement gains better interoperability with Scriptura, the Belgium company’s multi-platform document reformatting and routing engine, as well as compatibility with Word 2007 as a front-end interface for designing documents. DTM for iSeries allows users to automate the generation of business correspondence through the use of generalized “skeleton documents” and specific customer information stored in DB2/400 or other i5/OS data sources. The software also allows users to replace the OS/400 commands used by OfficeVision/400 with DTM for iSeries commands, if they

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• Optio Software Saves Manufacturer from the Paper Chase

  October 9, 2007 Alex Woodie

  A new system that electronically captures and stores business documents has saved Legend Valve, a Macomb, Michigan, manufacturer of valves and fittings, hundreds of hours of paper shuffling, according to the company that developed the solution, Optio Software. Before installing the Optio solution, locating and retrieving paper-based documents was a big part of what Legend Valve’s customer service representatives did. Each member of the 13-person staff would be required to pull up, on average, about 10 documents per day, accounting for many hours over the week. Following the implementation of Optio’s document repository and data capture solutions with Legend’s

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• IBM Preps Update to Virtualization Manager

  October 8, 2007 Alex Woodie

  The upcoming release of Systems Director Virtualization Manager version 1.2 from IBM will allow System i shops to manage and control virtual machines created with a variety of virtualization solutions, including VMware ESX Server, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005, and Xen‘s XenSource offering, from a single location. However, it doesn’t offer System i users the same degree of control over their virtual assets as it does to their Windows and Linux brethren. Last week, IBM announced that on September 28, Systems Director Virtualization Manager will become available. The software, which is available as a free add-on to IBM Director, allows

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• IBM Offers System i Blade Deal, Nixes i5 550 in Upgrade Deal

  October 8, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The fourth quarter is now well under way, and if there is one thing that is surprising right now, it is the dearth of special deals from IBM to help bolster sales of the System i. IBM likes to close the year on a high note, and the fourth quarter has often been a very good one for the AS/400, iSeries, and System i family of machines. In no small measure thanks to wheeling and dealing by IBM and its reseller channel, which pushes the vast majority of System i machinery. It is hard to say why more System i

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• IBM Tweaks BladeCenter S for the Office, Preps Power6 Blades

  October 8, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Back in June, IBM previewed a blade server chassis aimed at moving blades from the data centers of the world’s largest organizations, who have been trying to cram as much computing power as they can in as small a space as possible, to small and medium businesses, who want integrated systems that fit in a closet, in a corner, or under a desk. The BladeCenter S was IBM’s initial foray, and now that Hewlett-Packard has announced its “Shorty” BladeSystem c3000 chassis, IBM has rejiggered the BladeCenter S chassis to better compete in the SMB space. The BladeCenter S chassis that

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• Growing Businesses, Upgrades Drive IT Hiring in Q4

  October 8, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Fears of recession subsided last week thanks to a mediocre jobs report from the U.S. Labor Department that said employers added 110,000 jobs in September and 89,000 jobs in August, despite a slowdown in the construction and manufacturing sectors and jitters in the stock and mortgage markets. People were cheered last week–particularly on Wall Street–because jobs grew even though the economy seems to be slowing down a bit. So far, if surveys by Robert Half Technology are any indication, IT managers are still optimistic about the hiring they planned to do in the remaining three months of 2007. RHT is

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• As I See It: Great Looking Genes

  October 8, 2007 Victor Rozek

  Ever since we began to understand the pivotal role of biology in behavior, the nature-or-nurture debate has been raging between proponents of the “hard” and “soft” sciences. Why are some people pleasant and some not? Why are certain co-workers more helpful than others? Alternately, why do some people delight in punishing and behaving cruelly? Are such traits an outgrowth of character; or are they inherited? Is it chance, luck, parenting, the mysterious workings of a deity; or is it the output of the human operating system we call genetics. As science unravels the complexities of the genome, we’re confirming what

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• The Never-Ending Story: Enterprise Software Integration

  October 8, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Say you wanted a fresh start in IT and had to pick an aspect of the business to work in. What would you choose? These days, hardware is a tough sell, ERP providers are consolidating, and too many professional services seem to end up outsourced to India. But if you chose enterprise software integration, you’d be rewarded with a never-ending demand for your software and skills, according to Martin Fincham, LANSA‘s general manager for the EMEA region. Fincham came to his realization in a round-about fashion, as is the case with any good realization. He had been working at

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• Patently Absurd: IBM Tries to Patent Outsourcing, Then Kills It

  October 8, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Sometimes, you have to laugh so you don’t cry. Last week, Barron’s, the weekend investment rag put out by Dow Jones and the companion to the Wall Street Journal, picked up on a story in the Westchester County, New York-based News Journal that detailed a patent application that IBM filed on July 12 concerning business methods to perform technical and economic analysis and recommend outsourcing options to customers. India is, of course, the hot spot for outsourcing in the IT sector these days. IBM already has 55,000 employees in India, having added 10,000 new jobs this year in

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• Lawson Profits on Booming Software Sales Despite U.S. Weakness

  October 8, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Midrange ERP software maker Lawson Software has finished up its first quarter of fiscal 2008, and has once again managed to pull down some profits despite what it calls some temporary weakness in the North American market. Lawson’s sales in the quarter, which ended on August 31, rose by 16 percent to $187.4 million, with sales up in the three major geographic regions–Americas, EMEA, and Asia/Pacific–where Lawson does business. In the quarter, Lawson’s software license fee sales rose by a remarkable 52 percent to $25.5 million. This is remarkable mainly because thanks to the acquisition of Intentia International, one of

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